Morpho aega pseudocypris

JH · Post by JH » Tue Jan 28, 2020 3:15 pm

A Morpho aega pseudocypris from the Swedish Natural History Museum. I used a Nikon TU plan 10x.

Best regards
Jörgen Hellberg

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Tue Jan 28, 2020 6:01 pm

This is a spectacular species of Morpho. Nice photo, but the blue scales look a bit speckly, as if the light was partly coherent. Might need a milk diffuser to decohere the light and eliminate the speckle pattern.

JH · Post by JH » Wed Jan 29, 2020 2:56 am

Lou Jost wrote:This is a spectacular species of Morpho. Nice photo, but the blue scales look a bit speckly, as if the light was partly coherent. Might need a milk diffuser to decohere the light and eliminate the speckle pattern.

Hi Lou Jost
Thanks for the nice comments and the interesting suggestions.

The scales on Morphos are new to me. This is a photo of what I expected a Morpho to look like.

This is a picture of the Morpho aega pseudocypris.

The effect of light on the scales are quite amazing. I made an animated GIF to indicate the effect of the light. But that GIF seems to be to large for the forum. It can be found here: https://www.hellberg.photo/2020/01/28/m ... udocypris/

I brought my own tube lens and microscope objective to the museum but appart from that I used the gear at hand. At 15x on sensor I had to use diffused flash and quite a lot of trial and error to get the wing scales as shiny as possible. As can be seen the scales on the veins did not change colour.

It would be interesting to try to test the effect with different wavelengths and diffusion to see what happens.

Finaly a stereo. I removed sensor dust and dust on the wing in Photoshop. Stacked with Zerene.

Best regards
Jörgen

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Wed Jan 29, 2020 5:27 am

You might also enjoy Morpho sulkowskyi, very different from a typical Morpho. Maybe that museum has them?

GIFs would be nice, I hope to make some myself for a series of our local Morpho species to illustrate their differences. I could not get yours to work for some reason. Maybe my browser (Firefox) doesn't recognize it as a gif?

Pau · Post by **Pau** » Wed Jan 29, 2020 5:44 am

Lou Jost wrote:... I could not get yours to work for some reason. Maybe my browser (Firefox) doesn't recognize it as a gif?

In my Win7-64 computer Firefox shows it very well

JH · Post by JH » Wed Jan 29, 2020 6:15 am

@Lou Jost
I probably mixed up the files - this time the GIF uploaded nicely. Hope you can view it here on the forum without any problems.

And thanks for the tip about the Morpho sulkowskyi!

@Pau
Thanks for the information. I try to look at my web pages with Chrome and Edge but does not use Firefox so I was worried that there was something affecting all Firefox users.

Best regards
Jörgen Hellberg

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Wed Jan 29, 2020 6:31 am

Pau, my Firefox is also on a Windows 7 -64 computer...
Anyway the gif in the new post here works perfectly.

Jörgen, the M sulkowskyi is almost completely transparent on top, so you see the yellow color of the scales on the underside of the wing, but if the angle of the light is perfect, you get an intense blue-purple mirror-lilke flash of light. Ocassionally (once every couple of years) I see this species flying over my yard, and it is always a memorable experience!

Pau · Post by **Pau** » Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:41 am

Lou Jost wrote:Pau, my Firefox is also on a Windows 7 -64 computer...
Anyway the gif in the new post here works perfectly.

Ops!
I was referring to the gif at Jőrgen's site

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:45 am

Pau, oops^2. I too was referring to the one on his site.

MarkSturtevant · Post by **MarkSturtevant** » Wed Jan 29, 2020 11:51 am

Some years ago I was in a butterfly house to take pictures. At one point I came across a blue morpho (Morpho peleides) up near the brightly sun-lit ceiling with its wings wide open. Rather than looking like a blue butterfly, the intense light going thru the wings made it entirely ghostly brown. I used my camera flash to take this picture. The incident light from the flash produced the structural blue color over only part of the wings -- an effect that is similar to what is shown by JH.

Danny Burk · Post by **Danny Burk** » Wed Jan 29, 2020 12:19 pm

Nice to see some less typical species here. Your M. aega is a female form; it also comes in all brown and mixed brown-blue forms. The males are always shining blue, lighter in color than many of the other blue species.

I agree that M. sulkowskyii is a beautiful species; it occurs in multiple subspecies, some of which are quite different. Females are attractive too, with more brown and reduced blue compared to males.

When my setup is ready eventually, perhaps I can give some of these species a try. I have quite a few species in mind that I'm anxious to put through their paces, including many that aren't often seen, such as various Delias and African Charaxes.